How about something a little lighter in tone here at c/detroit? My favorite kokujin journalist (Happy belated Valentine’s Day, Ms Green 💘 😊) writes about chef Maryam Khan, her 15 minutes of Reality TV fame and her future brick-and-mortar plans…
When Khan first started Khana back in 2018, she wasn’t quite sure where her life was going and felt a little lost. She has had a passion for food since she was 16, however, and decided to get creative with the recipes she grew up eating in her Pakistani household. Khan is a first-generation American born in Detroit to immigrant parents.
For Khan, the pop-up has been a way to reconnect with her Pakistani identity, which is something that she struggled with as a first-generation American, especially during the surge of Islamophobia post-9/11.
“I’ve been getting a lot of love globally from South Asians who found out about us from word of mouth through the show [The Great Food Truck Race – r2],” she says. “The people who wanted to hate us got the opportunity to hate us but the people who were open minded saw the vision of what we’re trying to do. We were dedicated to putting our names out there and being like, yo, Pakistani food is dope [and] Pakistani identity is not like what it used to be… It was really cool to have the platform to share that with so many people.”